MEET THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD – iPodMeister

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood, In your neighborhood, in your neighborhood.

They’re the people that you meet When you’re walking down the street They’re the people that you meet each day!

Back in 197?, whenever I watched this segment on Sesame Street, it would feature occupations such as dentists, grocers, and firemen. Never in my wildest imaginations would I have thought that 30+ years later that group would come to include something called an iPodMeister. Of course back in the 70′s I never could have envisioned living happily in a small apartment in Queens either, but that’s another story. Nowadays, the first thing a parent might conjure when faced with describing an iPodMeister to their young children is “Ooh sounds scary, maybe in a few years.” Yet for their own well being, what should come to mind is “Wow, what an awesome concept.” Especiallyfor those living in say, a small, space-constrained apartment in Queens with a midget or two and all the “infrastructure” required to, uhh, nurture them.

Thus I ventured down to Borden Avenue, an area that also might seem scary to some, to meet with the founder of this locally based business. Kris Schrey began iPodMeister 13 years ago, based on his own experience trying to sell his entire CD collection in order to reduce the amount of “stuff” in his life. After lugging roughly 200 CD’s in a cab from his midtown apartment to the stores in the East Village that purchased used CD’s, he came away disenfranchised over the pennies on the dollar prices he was quoted, and the whole process of being judged on his musical tastes(Author’s personal anecdote: being bid $2 for my entire KISS collection, which I paid ~$150 bucks for in 6th grade. The indignity was much more painful than the price). In tandem with the tremendous hassle of the schlepping, Kris thought ‘there has to be a better way.’ So he went about creating it.

The business was started in a ’10 x ’10 storage room in Manhattan, which grew to 5 rooms, then a loft in Dumbo, then two lofts, then to a space by the Queensboro Bridge. Finally, he has settled into half a floor in one of the massive industrial buildings on Borden Avenue. Kris moved his operation to LIC for several reasons. First of all it is the only place in NYC, outside of the Bronx and remote areas in Brooklyn(Sunset Park, where’s that?) where one can still find large industrial spaces that can accomodate 50 ft. trailers and the loading docks and elevators his business requires. It houses over half a million cd’s, as well as tons of books. The day I visited he had just received several pallets of books from a collection in Long Island. Kris explained to me how most people sell these items when there is a transition in their life, namely a move, and they come to the big decision “while we’re at it, we may as well get rid of…” These are usually very emotional moments, as people are ridding themselves of the music they listened to in say high school or college, and the memories that are attached to it. Of course there’s also a pretty good chance those CD’s haven’t been taken out of their case since graduation, as many people have moved on to a digital format.

Finally, there is an environmental angle to all this: CD’s and their cases are not biodegradable, so if you just throw them in the garbage, they end up in a landfill for eternity. Most people want to do the right thing ecologically, it’s just not always so easy. Kris honed in on this human foible as the key to his business, and thus iPodMeister makes it practically effortless by offering free inbound FedEx shipping and printable labels. So now you have absolutely no excuse not to declutter your apartment, and save the natural habitat of the indigenous people of Staten Island.

iPodMeister – CD’s, DVD’s, Books, and Legos for cash, or you can choose to have the CD’s ripped into digital format

[…] for Long Island. LICtalk has previously profiled two businesses in the Blanchard. The first BklynBooks (aka iPodMeister) was mentioned in the Times story, and is moving to Paterson, NJ. The second, Manhattan Fruitier, […]